April 28, 2018

Japanese Communist Party Chair Kazuo Shii on April 27 issued a statement welcoming the latest inter-Korean summit meeting and the joint declaration signed by the two Korean leaders. The full text of his statement is as follows:

JCP welcomes the historic inter-Korean summit and the Panmunjom Declaration

Kazuo Shii
Chair, Japanese Communist Party
Member of the House of Representatives of Japan
Tokyo
April 27, 2018


Today, Moon Jae-in, the president of the Republic of Korea, and Kim Jong-un, the state affairs commission chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, held a summit meeting on the South Korean side of the border village of Panmunjom.

Kim set foot on South Korean soil and became the first North Korean leader to do so. Moon said, “Panmunjom is no longer a symbol of division but a symbol of peace.” This summit meeting turned out to be a truly historic event.

The two leaders together signed the Panmunjom Declaration. The declaration states that “South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula,” and that “South and North Korea agreed to actively pursue trilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the United States, or quadrilateral meetings involving the two Koreas, the United States and China with a view to declaring an end to the (Korean) War, turning the armistice into a peace treaty, and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime.” They also agreed to work together to “boldly approach a new era of national reconciliation, peace and prosperity, and to improve and cultivate inter-Korean relations in a more active manner.”

The Panmunjom Declaration marked a significant advance toward denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and building a peace regime in Northeast Asia. The Japanese Communist Party heartily welcomes this advance.

We sincerely hope that this agreement will be fully implemented, that the 73-year-old division and confrontation between the two Koreas will be ended, that people of North and South Korea will come to live in peace and prosperity, and that the two Koreas will be eventually unified.

As Moon stated that the inter-Korean summit should be a “good guide” leading to the expected summit between the United States and North Korea, these back-to-back summits are closely connected with each other. The JCP expresses high expectations for the success of the coming US-North Korea summit based on the historic achievement of the inter-Korean talks.